Sunday, 22 September 2013

#ELTchat Summary 18th September 2013 How to Exploit Reading Texts

How to Exploit Reading Texts.

This was an interesting discussion, with a group of
international participants, all experienced teachers and material designers, sharing
their advice.

@MarjorieRosenbe, fresh
from her break, started off by asking the direction of the chat:

Is this any
type of text; classroom and homework activities?

@Charlesrei1mentioned
that he was less confident exploiting texts than images, and was therefore
looking forward to the discussion. He also mentioned that he worried that text
based lessons could fall flat if the topic held no appeal for the class and
hadn't yet found a way to revive them.

@worldteacher talked
about a workshop on exploiting 50-word texts she had attended. The speaker had
suggested that it was possible to derive 4 hours of lessons from one text.

It was agreed that authentic texts were not
only for advanced students and that texts of all levels need to be made
accessible to the class, whatever their level. @MarjorieRosenbe’sstudents are delighted when they are able read an
authentic text , and having fun with texts, to activate vocabulary and give
students confidence was a major factor in her use of them in her University
classroom.

The provenance of texts was questioned. Do we
just use Native speaker English, or can texts be taken from a variety of
Non-native speaker sources. It appeared that the use of NNS sources was
dependent on the teaching context, country, and the time available in the
curriculum.

@touqoasked
how copyright is dealt with when exploiting texts and @AnthonyGaughanthought something like Wikinews, which is copyright
free, or Creative Commons licensed texts, would be the best solution.

@MarjorieRosenbeshared
one of her lesson ideas:

·Use a text from the NY
Times- a true story about a small boy who takes his mum’s car.

·Students can look at key
words and teach them to each other

·Give students difficult
vocabulary and they write their own story before they read the text. Meeting
new vocabulary is then not a problem.

It also makes them
interested in finding out what the real story is about.

·Read the text

·Add words or substitute
words in the text

·The stories can be read
aloud and students can vote on the best, funniest, most creative etc. This is
done only to share their work in groups- not as a reading aloud task.

@Marisa_Craised
her concerns about reading aloud- which had been covered in a previous #ELTchat
You can access the summary here http://t.co/XJcezLiGDJ

·Students could act out the
text, which gets them using the new vocabulary.

·or produce a piece of
writing: you are one of the characters in the text, describe it from your point
of view.

·or collaborate to create
crossword for another group to complete.

Activities
to start with, before reading, to activate schematic knowledge

@worldteacher:
always use realia, or if not possible pictures to generate interest.

@pjgallantry suggested
that cartoons might work. Students could supply the words and then compare with
the text afterwards.

To see level of language complexity, the Oxford
3000 check tool will help with authentic texts

the native reader

And
how to approach the text itself?

@worldteacher:Is
skimming and scanning ALWAYS a good idea before reading for detail?

It was agreed that
both are not always necessary, and that it would depend on the text, and how
native speakers would deal with it too. Also, if the gist is obvious, and there
are no real points to scan for, it would be a waste of time. However, students
need to learn the scanning technique, as they often want to read everything in
detail, which is not always the most efficient way to handle a text.

@Marisa_CThere
is a suggestion about top-down reading ( from global to local processing)
rather than close reading.

Reading for bias was also mentioned. @Charlesrei1tries to integrate this with every text as he
sees it as a critical skill. He defined it as interpreting the author
statements and assumptions, together with reading between the lines and reading
with different views in mind.

@pjgallantry: a way to help students with text
is to place it in a global context and relevance to their situation, as pre,
mid, and post text work.

Using
web tools

Using web tools

@nroberts88 suggested
putting text through http://t.co/SEGrvwCar6 to show the students a map of the text. They can then guess the theme
or title. (This is a new tool for me, and one I will be looking to test in the
near future.) Thank you.

Wordle or Tagxedo were also recommended as word
cloud tools the students could use to predict the topic. Tagxedo has the edge
here, as interesting shapes can also be used to predict the topic. As @pjgallantrysaid: you could import a picture that relates
to the story; e.g. the shape of a car could be used for a new item about a car.
@worldteacher thought
that it helped with critical thinking too, as students would have to offer
reasons for their guesses.

Lots of ideas to look through, some good
practice for pre-reading and tasks to do while reading- and some excellent
sources of material: a great #ELTchat as always, thanks to everyone who took
part in the chat.